re: Who to Call .... Dolby Atmos Samsung-Denon

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The last 2 surround posts on receiver should be height speakers. Should be able to assign them that way in the menu.

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First, I am going to assume that the ceiling speakers are installed and the OP is locked into the 7 speakers and their locations. I am assuming the two pairs of speakers are located 1 set roughly in the middle of the room and one set near the back of the room.

The final set of speakers outputs on the far right of his AVR are assignable. Their are several options and those options are shown graphically starting on page 41 of his owner's manual.

The problem here is the side surrounds are not assignable and must be used to power the side surround channel. So the side surround channel is going to be coming from the ceiling. You would connect it to the ceiling speaker pair that is near the middle of the room. This is obviously not an ideal placement since you want the side surrounds down in the bed layer. However, I guarantee there are millions of homes with surrounds in the ceiling, I see them all the time in friends' and families' homes.

The question is what to do with the last 2 channels. Like I said there are numerous options but in my mind only one makes any sense. Because he is stuck with the side surrounds in the ceiling I think you "have" to go with the surround back channels for the rear ceiling speakers. I say this because if you use them for height speakers of any sort then you will be having bed layer spatial cues coming from the front ceiling speakers and height spatial cues coming from the ones father back. This seems like making a less than ideal setup worse. The AVR also doesn't decode a rear height channel so any height spacial cues would be coming from behind where they should.

The AVR also has both Dolby Atmos Height Virtualization and DTS Virtual:X which both produce 3d effects without the use of height speakers but I have no idea how well they would work with downfiring ceiling speakers it might make planes could like they are on the floor. BTW both options work fairly well on most material with a 7 speaker bed layer.

IMO the most coherent option is to wire the rear ceilings as rear surrounds. There really is no other reasonable option if the speakers are indeed in the middle and the back of the room. Now this doesn't mean the OP can't assign the rear speakers as top middle speakers (speaker assignment is covered on page 183 of his manual) and see what he thinks. Whatever works for him. He can switch back and forth from his chair just using the menu and decide what he prefers. Just find a movie scene with a lot of overhead action which is either an Atmos or DTS:X then compare the rears set to rear surround and set to top middle. You should also try Dolby Atmos Height Virtualization and DTS Virtual:X with the ceiling speakers set to rear surround.


In most homes speaker locations are dictated by unmovable outside forces. In our primary home we have 4 surround setups from 7.1 to 9.18.6 and the only one that doesn't have speaker locations that aren't ideal is the dedicated home theater and the room was designed around speakers versus the normal route of putting speakers in a room that already exists. The HT also does not have the constraints of SAF though I do defer on some points because she lives in that room too.

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Well awhile back I had rear surrounds but they were an eye sore (not to me). We're getting older and downsized into a smaller house. So I got rid of my Klipsch Heresy's (bought new in 1975) that were in the front and moved the smaller rear speakers to the front. I'm just trying to make something work. The ceiling speakers are Polk RC80i's.

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I’m assuming the ceiling speakers were already installed when you moved in?

Are the “front” ceiling speakers in the front of the room or are they roughly above the listening position?

If they’re in the front of the room, the ceiling speakers were probably originally intended to be a 5.1 setup (with center channel mounted lower). In this case, I would probably go with one of the following three options:

1. Stick with 5.1 using the ceiling speakers as front and surround L/R. Disconnect your existing L/R entirely (basically going back to the original 5.1 setup).

2. Stick with 5.1 using your current front L/R speakers and the ceiling surround L/R speakers. Disconnect the front ceiling speakers entirely. Personally, I hate having front L/R speakers mounted high on the wall or in ceiling. They should be roughly the same height as your TV for proper imaging. So if your current front speakers are mounted low and you don’t want to mess with option #3, this is probably what I’d do.

3. Add normal surround speakers (mounted low-ish on the wall) and go to 5.1.2. You would use two of your ceiling speakers (probably the front, but maybe the rear if they aren’t behind the listening position) for Atmos height channels while disconnecting the other two.

All of the above assumes the front ceiling speakers are actually in the front of the room (e.g. originally part of a 5.1 system). If the “front” speakers are roughly even with the listening position while the “rear” speakers are behind, they were originally a 7.1 system. In that case, I would either:

1. Go to 5.1 using your current front L/R and using one pair of ceiling speakers as surround L/R. Which pair depends on where they’re mounted. If they were originally 7.1 surrounds, the “front” pair may be too far forward to reasonably use for 5.1 surrounds.

2. Set it up as 7.1 using the ceiling speakers as the 4 surround channels.

3. Go to 5.1.2 by adding normal surrounds and using the “front” ceiling speakers as Atmos height channels (basically same as #3 above).

In any case, it’s not going to sound good to mix ceiling speakers as both surrounds and Atmos height channels. As others have said, you need the vertical separation between the channels for Atmos to really be worthwhile.

One other tidbit - personally, I would say that a properly set up 5.1.2 system adds more to the viewing experience than a 7.1 system. So if adding lower surround speakers is an option, I’d probably go that route over 7.1. But that’s just me.